‘A New Knights Templar for the New Apocalypse: The Brotherhood of Steel in Fallout 4’

Thomas Lecaque, Grand View University. @tlecaque https://twitter.com/MidAgesModGames/status/1279069729433493504

1/ #MAMG20 The influence of neomedievalism in first-person video games is everywhere, but particularly prevalent in Bethesda Games—be it Skyrim or Wolfenstein or #Fallout4. Umberto Eco, who coined the term, thought “fantastic neomedievalism” was garbage, that the “avalanche of 2/ #MAMG20 pseudo-medieval pulp in paperbacks, midway between Nazi nostalgia and occultism” was not an area for academic study. He’s wrong on that last part, but unfortunately not on how Bethesda has used neomedieval tropes in their games. The Brotherhood of Steel in the #Fallout

3/ #MAMG20 series is pure neomedievalism—“knights” & “paladins” following a code, wearing massive suits of armor, fighting under the symbol of the sword & gear, they are a military order—austere in lifestyle, focused on mission, ready for combat. See https://youtube.com/watch?v=tkXsyRQRZ8M.

4/ #MAMG20 In Fallout 3, they change from the covert, technocratic and techno-hoarding nature to becomes heroes—paladins in the chanson de geste kind of way, resembling more a science fiction Knights of the Round Table than in other games. This was 2008. The BoS and the Enclave,

5/ #MAMG20 villains of Fallouts 1-3, are mirrored opposites, different visions of the post-apocalyptic evolution of a retrofuturistic US military. In 3 the Enclave offers the option of committing mass genocide throughout the Capital Wasteland, clearly an evil choice but 1 of many

6/ #MAMG20 genuinely monstrous options offered as “lolz”. In to 2011 and #Skyrim, also written by Emil Pagliarulo, one of the main factions in the game, the Stormcloaks, advocate ethnic cleansing. The Stormcloaks are important because they become the intellectual forefathers of

7/ #MAMG20 the Brotherhood of Steel in #Fallout4—separatists who are also Nordic supremacists who want to cleanse the land of all mer (elves, Khajit, Argonians, etc.) Ethnic cleansing as play. The Brotherhood in #Fallout4, released Nov. 2015, is the Stormcloak ideology realized,

8/ #MAMG20 They become the crusaders (see https://twitter.com/mjhorswell/status/1279063131780677633?s=20) of the post-Gamergate world where the alt-right began increasingly relying on memes and online trolling to recruit and bolster their movement. This Brotherhood maintains the neomedieval aesthetic but flips the

9/ #MAMG20 benevolent knighthood of the Fallout 3 into the violence of the Knights Templar of Kingdom of Heaven or an alt-right meme. That neomedieval knightly aesthetic meets a clash of civilizations with an invasion of the Commonwealth under a charismatic leader with a massive

10/ #MAMG20 zeppelin, the Prydwen, & a messiah complex—as Arthur Maxson says in Fallout 3, “ You see, I am descended from the great Roger Maxson, founder of our order. I am the last of his line. They say my soul was forged from eternal steel...” His mission is human supremacy & 11/ #MAMG20 ethnic cleansing of the Commonwealth, and there’s no in-game indication that the Brotherhood are seen as villains for this—they are portrayed as heroic knights. The ethnic cleansing is of super mutants, ghouls, synths, often but not exclusively used as villains.

12/ #MAMG20 This vision of the Brotherhood is the Knights Templar as seen by the far right—heroic defenders of humanity against other sentient races in game, but used IRL to defend notions of whiteness constructed along the Nazi nostalgia Eco warned about. And that’s the problem.